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In this program, Phil discusses a wide range of topics about Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement:
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Phil Goldfarb is a 4th generation pharmacist by profession and a retired Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps. He worked in the health care and medical communications industry for 40 years helping to grow and take a company public while retiring as Divisional Vice President of Operations for a Fortune 20 Company.
Phil is the founding President of the JGS of Tulsa in 2005 and has been doing genealogy for over 40 years. A genealogy contributor for web sites, he has lectured extensively having given over 2,000 presentations, published articles on genealogy sites and journals, written two books on passports and passport applications, and authors a monthly column in the Tulsa Jewish Review. He is the editor of The Weekly News Nosh…News about Jewish Genealogy, Jewish History and Jewish Culture which is published in Tracing the Tribe, The Jewish Genealogy Portal, and the Jewish Genealogy SIG on Facebook each Sunday, as well as on the L’Dor V’Dor Foundation website for those who do not use Facebook at www.ldvdf.org/newsnosh.
Phil co-produced a 2020 Emmy Award winning Historical Documentary titled: L’Dor V’Dor: Generation to Generation… the History of Tulsa’s Jewish Community, was Chairman of 2020 IAJGS Awards Committee, Member of the 2024 IAJGS Nominating Committee and assisted with the development and implementation of the LDVDF Worldwide Jewish Event Calendar which can be utilized 24/7/365 at www.ldvdf.org/Jdays
Phil is the founding President of the JGS of Tulsa in 2005 and has been doing genealogy for over 40 years. A genealogy contributor for web sites, he has lectured extensively having given over 2,000 presentations, published articles on genealogy sites and journals, written two books on passports and passport applications, and authors a monthly column in the Tulsa Jewish Review. He is the editor of The Weekly News Nosh…News about Jewish Genealogy, Jewish History and Jewish Culture which is published in Tracing the Tribe, The Jewish Genealogy Portal, and the Jewish Genealogy SIG on Facebook each Sunday, as well as on the L’Dor V’Dor Foundation website for those who do not use Facebook at www.ldvdf.org/newsnosh.
Phil co-produced a 2020 Emmy Award winning Historical Documentary titled: L’Dor V’Dor: Generation to Generation… the History of Tulsa’s Jewish Community, was Chairman of 2020 IAJGS Awards Committee, Member of the 2024 IAJGS Nominating Committee and assisted with the development and implementation of the LDVDF Worldwide Jewish Event Calendar which can be utilized 24/7/365 at www.ldvdf.org/Jdays
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June 28, 2026 at 10:00 am (Pacific time zone)
Alexander Avram
Overview of Romanian Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania
Alexander Avram
Overview of Romanian Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania
Most Jews living in the Old Kingdom of Romania (former principalities of Moldavia and Walachia) used surnames common throughout European Jewry. There were two exceptions: one, a small concentration of Sephardic Jews in Walachia; the other: between 8% to 14% of the Jews in these territories adapted their surnames to Romanian patterns or adopted plain Romanian surnames. The presentation will try to analyze and categorize these specific surnames by giving examples and outlining their historical and sociological causes and implications.
Dr. Alexander Avram retired in 2025 as Director of the Hall of Names and the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names at Yad Vashem. He trained as a philologist and linguist with a Ph.D. in the History of the Jewish People from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Alexander specializes in Holocaust victim research, Jewish onomastics (the study of the history and origin of personal names), and the history of Jewish presence in the Romanian Principalities, as well as coexistence and anti-Semitism in 19th-century Romania, and the Holocaust in Romania and Transnistria.
Dr. Avram is the author of the book: Historical Implications of Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania
Dr. Alexander Avram retired in 2025 as Director of the Hall of Names and the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names at Yad Vashem. He trained as a philologist and linguist with a Ph.D. in the History of the Jewish People from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Alexander specializes in Holocaust victim research, Jewish onomastics (the study of the history and origin of personal names), and the history of Jewish presence in the Romanian Principalities, as well as coexistence and anti-Semitism in 19th-century Romania, and the Holocaust in Romania and Transnistria.
Dr. Avram is the author of the book: Historical Implications of Jewish Surnames in the Old Kingdom of Romania
Register in advance for this Zoom presentation. Click this link to register.
July 26, 2026 at 10:00 am (Pacific time zone)
Emily Garber
Town Counsel: Finding Your Ancestor's European Town of Origin
Emily Garber
Town Counsel: Finding Your Ancestor's European Town of Origin
One of the foundational steps in Jewish genealogy research is identifying not only the names of our ancestors’ towns of origin, but also pinpointing their locations on modern maps. Successful research into Eastern European roots requires establishing this information through records of immigrant ancestors and their relatives and descendants in their adopted countries.
This presentation will outline effective strategies and key data sources to thoroughly investigate ancestral towns. Emily will also explore methods for distinguishing between similarly named communities and demonstrate how to leverage the FAN club (Friends, Associates, and Neighbors) principle to enhance your research.
Emily Garber is a Jewish family history researcher, writer and speaker. An archaeologist by training (B.A., and M.A.), she holds a certificate from Boston University's Genealogical Research program and owns Extra Yad Genealogical Services.
Emily blogs at https://extrayad.blogspot.com/, has written two books and several articles that have appeared in Avotaynu and NGS Magazine. She has spoken at National Genealogical Society and IAJGS conferences and coordinated week-long Jewish genealogy seminars for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy.
She is chair of the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group, Vice President of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, and a director on the board of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.
This presentation will outline effective strategies and key data sources to thoroughly investigate ancestral towns. Emily will also explore methods for distinguishing between similarly named communities and demonstrate how to leverage the FAN club (Friends, Associates, and Neighbors) principle to enhance your research.
Emily Garber is a Jewish family history researcher, writer and speaker. An archaeologist by training (B.A., and M.A.), she holds a certificate from Boston University's Genealogical Research program and owns Extra Yad Genealogical Services.
Emily blogs at https://extrayad.blogspot.com/, has written two books and several articles that have appeared in Avotaynu and NGS Magazine. She has spoken at National Genealogical Society and IAJGS conferences and coordinated week-long Jewish genealogy seminars for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy.
She is chair of the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group, Vice President of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, and a director on the board of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.
Register in advance for this Zoom presentation. Click this link to register.
October 25, 2026 at 10:00 am (Pacific time zone)
Hal Bookbinder
Finding ancestors in the 1850 Russian Revizskie skazki
Hal Bookbinder
Finding ancestors in the 1850 Russian Revizskie skazki
The Russian Revizskie skazki can be a gold mine in finding information about our ancestors. “Revizskie skazki” literally translates as “revision tales”, though we generally refer to them as “revision lists”. While censuses only provide information on people currently alive, revision lists include “tales” about the men who died or moved away since the prior revision list.
The talk will provide an overview of the periodic revision lists and demonstrate how I was able to use the 1850 and 1858 ones to identify ancestors, including those who lived earlier, and even to creatively use the information to get back yet an extra generation or two where no records exist at all.
During the past three years, the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division has indexed and made available on the All-Ukraine Database, approximately four million Russian records. This includes hundreds of thousands of records from Revision Lists and other censuses of Jews living in the Russian Empire. I will demonstrate how to efficiently search this amazing resource.
Hal Bookbinder is a retired information systems director and university instructor. He has been actively researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying over 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. He is a past president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Los Angeles (JGSLA) and of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). Hal publishes a series of monthly articles on safe computing which are freely available at http://www.tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles.
He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills of New York State, in the famed “Borsht Belt”. After attending New York University and a four-year stint in the US Air Force, they have lived in the Los Angeles area. In 2018, he made a journey to Ukraine, visiting various areas of the former Volhynia and Podolia in which his family lived for hundreds of years. He also spent time experiencing Kyiv during its Independence Day celebrations, and even visited Chernobyl.
The talk will provide an overview of the periodic revision lists and demonstrate how I was able to use the 1850 and 1858 ones to identify ancestors, including those who lived earlier, and even to creatively use the information to get back yet an extra generation or two where no records exist at all.
During the past three years, the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division has indexed and made available on the All-Ukraine Database, approximately four million Russian records. This includes hundreds of thousands of records from Revision Lists and other censuses of Jews living in the Russian Empire. I will demonstrate how to efficiently search this amazing resource.
Hal Bookbinder is a retired information systems director and university instructor. He has been actively researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying over 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. He is a past president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Los Angeles (JGSLA) and of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). Hal publishes a series of monthly articles on safe computing which are freely available at http://www.tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles.
He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills of New York State, in the famed “Borsht Belt”. After attending New York University and a four-year stint in the US Air Force, they have lived in the Los Angeles area. In 2018, he made a journey to Ukraine, visiting various areas of the former Volhynia and Podolia in which his family lived for hundreds of years. He also spent time experiencing Kyiv during its Independence Day celebrations, and even visited Chernobyl.
Register in advance for this Zoom presentation. Click this link to register.